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Orange Macaroons
Rub lump sugar on orange rind then roll the sugar and add sufficient powdered sugar to make in all one-fourth pound. Have whipped very stiff the whites, then add yolks of four eggs and beat in the sugar with the strained juice of the orange and three heaping tablespoons of flour or more (this must be stiff enough to roll into little balls). Dip the hands in cold water to roll the paste. Lay the balls on buttered paper and bake till done. Try them well as they will not brown.
A light egg-and-sugar drop rather than an almond macaroon: the whole flavour comes from oil rubbed out of the orange peel. Everything hinges on getting that oil into the sugar before anything else happens.
- The sugar-rubbing stepRub whole cubes of sugar hard against the skin of a fresh orange until each cube is coloured and damp with oil, then crush them. This is the entire flavour base and cannot be replaced by juice, which is mostly water and acid. Fine zest rubbed into the sugar with your fingers works if you have no lump sugar.
- One-fourth pound of sugarThat is 4 oz, a generous half cup of granulated or a scant cup of sifted powdered sugar. The rubbed lump sugar counts toward the total, so make up the difference with powdered.
- "Powdered sugar" in this periodIn nineteenth-century books powdered sugar usually means finely ground granulated, not the cornstarch-cut confectioners' sugar sold today. Either works here; confectioners' will give a slightly softer, quicker-spreading dough.
- Order of the eggsWhites are whipped stiff first and the yolks added after, which is backwards from modern sponge practice. Note that the recipe itself says to beat the sugar in rather than fold it; work the batter no more than needed to combine.
- The flour is a judgement callThree heaping tablespoons is a starting point only; the recipe says plainly to add more. Work in flour until the paste holds a ball on a wet palm without slumping, and expect to need noticeably more than three spoons once the orange juice goes in.
- Oven temperatureNo heat is given. Treat these as meringue-adjacent and use a slow to moderate oven, 300-325F, on the lower end if your oven runs hot.
- "They will not brown"This is the real instruction. Colour is no guide to doneness here, so test by touch: the tops should be dry and firm and lift cleanly from the paper. Breaking one open is a surer check.
- Buttered paperParchment on a flat sheet, buttered or not as you like. Let the macaroons cool fully on the paper before lifting or they will tear.
- YieldFour eggs and 4 oz sugar give roughly two to three dozen small balls, depending on how much flour the paste takes. Bake in batches rather than crowding the sheet.
Rubbing lump sugar on citrus peel to capture the oil is one of the oldest tricks in European confectionery, older than the zester and better than it: the oil sits just under the surface of the rind and a hard sugar crystal abrades it out cleanly without the bitter white pith. The result is an oleo-saccharum, the same preparation that flavours punch. Calling these macaroons stretches the word, since a macaroon properly means a nut paste bound with egg white, though by the later nineteenth century the term was often applied more loosely to small egg-white drops of other kinds.